


what is woven into the lives of others

by helloearthlings



Category: If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Genre: Epilogue, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 05:57:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15406506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: Alexander takes the letter from my hands, and I know he sees the name on the envelope because he sets it on the table without opening it, quickly, like the words would burn him if he read them.“Oliver,” Alexander says carefully, his voice a mixture of fear, wonderment, and grief. “Are you sure you want me to –?”“I need to know if you can see what I see,” I tell him. “You’re the only one who could be objective about it. Meredith’s too prejudiced against him. Pip would just pity me. I can’t talk to Wren. You’re the only one who can be objective. You’ll tell me if it’s nothing. You always have.”





	what is woven into the lives of others

**Author's Note:**

> What the fuck is this.
> 
> My schedule these past three days: Saturday, I bought a book called If We Were Villains that I'd heard recommended. I like Shakespeare and the Secret History, so I get it. I spend all day Saturday reading it, and lay there having an existential crisis for the rest of the night. Sunday, I read it all AGAIN and then continue my existential crisis. Today, I call in sick from work and Write Fic To Cope.
> 
> This is what happens in canon, fight me. If you're also like, not coping right now, I hope you enjoy how I'm dealing with it and wish you luck in dealing with your not-coping. I'm extremely emotionally compromised right now.

Alexander and I meet for a drink in the bar two blocks from his Brooklyn apartment.

“It’s not much,” Alexander says with an airy wave of his hand. He hasn’t changed much, he’s still tall and mangy and hasn’t put on any weight. I hope it’s not because of a persisting drug habit, though Filippa assured me that Colin tends to keep Alexander on the straight and narrow. “But rent is sky high right now, and Colin likes the view of the bridge.”

His hair is longer, flops in his eyes when he talks until he brushes it away. It makes him look younger.

All of us look young, even though we feel ancient.

“What’s Colin doing?” I ask. I don’t ask too much about Alexander himself, it would be a pleasantry and Alexander doesn’t really do pleasantries, and presumably knows that Pip’s told me everything I need to know about what he’s doing with his life.

“Off-Broadway right now,” Alexander says, smiling, and there’s a little pride there, I can see it lurking behind that casual disinterest of his that he uses to keep the world at a distance. “Supporting roles in some bigger shows. If you’re still in town this weekend, you should go. He’d like to see you.”

“I’d like to see him,” I say, surprisingly honest. Colin had always been kind to me, and I can tell he’s been good for Alexander, quiets that tempest that he’s always carrying around inside of him.

“So when are you going to tell me why you’re in New York?” Alexander asks with a lazy smirk that reminds of me countless times he’d gently bullied me into telling him things I didn’t want to divulge. “Meredith not satisfying you?”

He makes a lewd face. I don’t laugh, the image of Meredith throwing a wine glass across the room at me a little too fresh in my memory.

“Don’t,” I say, but not sharply. “Meredith – I think we both always knew that I was temporary.”

Alexander’s face sobers up, just slightly, with a grimace. “Yeah. The two of you were – well, I have no idea what the fuck you were, but, well, _love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better._ You two were never anything but sought.”

“Thanks,” I say dryly, not really knowing how to respond but knowing he’s mostly right. I want to argue on Meredith’s behalf, say that the love I felt for her was true and real no matter how fleetingly we met, but that’s not what Alexander had accused our love of being, so I kept quiet.

“It’s a good thing,” Alexander says, tipping his drink in my direction before taking a long drink. Regardless of his drug habits, I’m sure Alexander is still a liberal consumer of alcohol. Half of his budgeting probably goes to pretentiously named liquors. “Maybe it’ll give the two of you a chance to move on from – well, what none of us have ever been able to move on from.”

He smiles, tight-lipped, and it becomes a grimace without any warning. Maybe it was always a grimace.

We both take a long drink.

“I hope she can,” I acknowledge, clearing my throat. “But that’s why I’m here, actually. I want to show you something and see if – see if you can tell me if I’m going mad or if you can see what I do.”

Alexander’s eyebrows crease, but he nods, his confusion evident but nonetheless, willing to do as I ask. I’m grateful for it.

I reach into my jacket pocket, pull out the letter that I’ve poured over every minute detail of these past few weeks, begging it for some kind of sign, some kind of meaning that I hadn’t yet divulged, something that didn’t leave room for question but instead confirmed my racing suspicions.

There was no proof in the letter, none to be found, and I knew I wouldn’t find any no matter how long I looked. Likewise, there would be nothing to refute my theory within it either. I was perpetually lost, always in limbo, pleading Pericles to tell me another story than the one that had been presented to me.

Alexander takes the letter from my hands, and I know he sees the name on the envelope because he sets it on the table without opening it, quickly, like the words would burn him if he read them.

“Oliver,” Alexander says carefully, his voice a mixture of fear, wonderment, and grief. “Are you sure you want me to –?”

“I need to know if you can see what I see,” I tell him. “You’re the only one who could be objective about it. Meredith’s too prejudiced against him. Pip would just pity me. I can’t talk to Wren. You’re the only one who can be objective. You’ll tell me if it’s nothing. You always have.”

Alexander’s face is torn between a laugh and something more twisted.

“But,” I say, softly persistent, “I also need you to tell me if it’s _something_. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try,” Alexander says, hesitant, but he takes the letter, cautious and careful and begins reading James’s words.

I watch his face, waiting for any sort of clue to what he’s feeling, my heart in my throat. He remains expressionless save a puzzled tilt of his head.

“Pericles,” Alexander says a few moments later, setting the letter back on the table, putting his hands in his lap as if afraid to touch it again. “Odd choice. I would’ve gone with Ophelia.”

Immediately, he looks embarrassed, a guilty flush on his cheeks. That’s a little different. I can’t remember Alexander ever being ashamed about anything. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say quickly, wanting to know if he got any other impression from it.

“It’s in his writing,” Alexander says, as if by a means to assure me, of what I don’t know. “I’m sure he wrote it. I’m sure –”

I cut him off, but I don’t blame him for his confusion at what I’m asking for. I haven’t exactly been forthright, but then again, I want his honest impression. “I’m sure he wrote it, too. But the speech – the words –”

“They’re _odd_ ,” Alexander says again, looking at the letter but not touching it again. “I would’ve more expected a full monologue from him. Not Ophelia, but – maybe one of Romeo’s since it was, you know. Written for you.”

I don’t answer, I’m not ashamed of that anymore, and Alexander takes that as permission to keep talking. “But he was always a bit of a purist, didn’t fuck up the words like the rest of us. Disjointed he was not. But this monologue – is.”

I let him keep going, hoping he’ll work something out through talking through it, it’s always been his way.

“I mean, taken out of the context of Pericles, I guess it follows a kind of sense. The ocean and such. Ensuing death. What confuses me is the asking for help – I mean, presumably, this letter is the last thing he ever wrote, he never saw anyone again. Never saw _you_ again. Had to know it would be ages before you’d read it, even if he didn’t know it would be years. Why would he –”

Alexander suddenly stops talking.

A hot spill of relief goes through me.

“ _Which if you shall refuse, when I am dead,”_ Alexander reads, slowly, tension thrumming in his voice, _“for that I am a man, pray see me buried._ ”

We stare at one another, Alexander’s gaze inscrutable, until he speaks again.

“It makes no sense,” Alexander says, his voice growing just slightly heated, as if he’s about to fight something – me, the world, James, I don’t know. “How can he ask for your help when he’s already dead? How can a suicide note be asking for help when you were thousands of miles away when he – unless he –”

Suddenly, Alexander starts to laugh, wide and raucous and the few other bar patrons near us turn to look, just for a second, as he wipes stray moisture away from his eyes, still laughing, almost hysterical with it.

“It’s just –” Alexander hiccups. “It would be so like James. The true Shakespearean hero of us all. To die and yet somehow not be dead. _Pray see me buried._ No body. No fucking body, James fucking Farrow. If he was really dead, he couldn’t plan for it. Can’t control where your body is when it’s dead!”

He takes a drink, and I let him keep going with that manic laugh of his. “It always bothered me. No body. I couldn’t quite process it, when I heard. No body. No funeral. It wasn’t like with Richard, with the bastard gargling blood right in front of us. I managed to brush it off, because it felt like James the tragic hero. The drowning. When Richard tried to drown him – he kills Richard, Richard kills him. It was Shakespearean enough for me not to think that it couldn’t possibly get more so. Maybe that’s how he meant it to look.”

Alexander can’t stop laughing. He’s hysterical.  I thump his back a couple of times after he chokes on the drink he tries to swallow.

“But Oliver,” Alexander’s laughter suddenly fades, his eyes wide on mine, alert and almost afraid. “Don’t – don’t lose yourself, if it’s not. If he’s really gone. This isn’t – this isn’t proof. I’m not saying it’s not possible. If anyone could do it, it’s James. Tragic hero ‘til the end. But you don’t have to be, alright? You can stop being the tragic hero now.”

“I’m not, though,” I say. “I’m not the tragic hero.”

“Of course you are,” Alexander says, more than a little affectionate. “No one who isn’t a tragic hero would do the things you’ve done. Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. No one who isn’t a tragic hero would be stuck with the life you’re in.”

“I’m not,” I say again, emphatically. “I’m the sidekick. Always have been. But what if we’ve been reading it wrong? What if it isn’t a tragedy? What’s _Pericles_?”

“A romance,” Alexander answers with ease, then bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. “ _Fuck._ The ending – Thaisa. Dead at sea, alive in the end. Reunited. _Fuck.”_

“Yeah,” is all I can even begin to say, my body full of hot and sticky relief that somehow else can see this, that I’m not going out of my mind, that I’m not grasping at straws that no one else can see.

“Could James be lying? Could he have written this and just – died anyway?” Alexander says, his voice more than a little desperate. “No, no, he can’t control where his body’s found, he can’t have known there wouldn’t be a body unless he’s still alive. This – I’m not saying it’s not a coincidence, Oliver. It could just be a coincidence, but – this is _James_ we’re talking about. If anyone could do it –”

“On the beach,” I say, more than a little desperately, “on the beach in Del Norte, the best night of our lives, this is what he was reciting. Does that – doesn’t that have to _mean_ something?”

Alexander’s look isn’t pitying – it’s terrified, it’s electrified, it’s looking at me like I’m the most fragile person he’s ever seen, but it’s not pitying.

“It’s what he wanted you to have,” Alexander says slowly. “Whether it was suicide or not, he knew that was what it would look like – so these are, effectively, his last words to you. Of course they have to mean something. What they mean, I have no fucking clue. I want to live in a world where James Farrow is alive. But I still don’t know if it’s this one.”

“I have to find out,” I tell him, not leaving any room for argument, knowing that he’ll understand this, this _need_ inside me that fills me with the kind of desperation and energy that nothing else could.

Alexander smiles sadly. “But where, Oliver? There’s no location here. Not even any of his own words.”

“They’re his own words,” I say softly without hesitation, thinking of James in the library at the Castle, pencil behind his ear, eyebrows raised up at me over a folded over copy of _Pericles_. “Shakespeare has always been better at saying what we feel than we have, or have you forgotten? _We do not imitate, but are a model to others_.”

“ _If men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again,_ ” Alexander says in quick reply, not quite a jab, but certainly a retort. “And he _was_ destroyed, Oliver. Completely and fully.”

“James wouldn’t make it easy,” I say, taking the letter back from where Alexander had left it hanging, loose, on the table, and pocket it. “If this is the only proof he’s alive, then he’s someplace only I could know about.”

“And where would that be?”

My smile, much like my confidence, grows shakier by the second. I recall James’s last words to me. “Hell. Del Norte. Nowhere. I don’t know.”

“Hey,” Alexander says, reaching across the table, firmly grasping my shoulder. We haven’t touched since we came in the bar, just a handshake at the door, and it’s grounding to have his hand there. “If he’s alive, you’ll find him. If he’s dead, well. Don’t make this a Romeo and Juliet moment, or he’ll come back to life the second you’re gone.”

“I wouldn’t,” I say, mostly clumsily, because I don’t know if I would. If James is gone, nothing is a guarantee. But I could search for him forever. He could be the ghost I keep chasing for all my days.

That’s if this story is a tragedy. I never thought it could be anything but a tragedy until the scratching out of Pericles in James’s writing.

We didn’t put on romances at Dellecher. Sometimes they were lumped in with the comedies for the third-years; a production of _A Winter’s Tale_ or _The Tempest_ would grace the stage, but they were always rarer, never as popular. Harder to categorize. Harder to pin down. They didn’t end in death and chaos, is in a tragedy, but they were not the ordered, lighthearted fare of the comic world either.

Romances were not necessarily romantic. They were about second chances. Reunions. The dead coming back to life. 

“I’m going to look,” I tell Alexander. I would have probably told him this no matter what he saw in James’s letter, but it reassures me to know that someone else who knew James deeply and intricately could construct the same hidden meaning. “Don’t – don’t tell anyone. I don’t want them to…”

To what? Know that James could be alive? Know that I am so desperate for him that I’m willing to sacrifice my life once more – whether it be a life on my own or a life with Meredith – just for a chance to see him again?

 _You’ve wasted too many years on him,_ Meredith would say.

Filippa would be kinder, she’d smooth back my hair, kiss my cheek and say _sometimes life isn’t a tragedy or a comedy or a romance. Life doesn’t follow the rules like Shakespeare does. Sometimes death doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes it’s just death._

I think of Wren at Richard’s funeral. _Maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll learn to breathe again. The rest of us must go on._

But there’s a reason I came here, to Alexander, the villain who had never been a villain at all, even with his dark hair and white teeth and hysterical laugh. He’d never been a villain. Not to me.

 Alexander smiles at me. There’s no pity, no fear. Just a smile.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Alexander promises. “But you have to tell me. If you find him. I presume wherever he is, dead or alive, he doesn’t want to be found by anyone but you. I don’t need to see him – but I need to _know._ Richard’s death is going to haunt me forever, but if I can escape James’s death? I’m sure as shit going to.”

“I’ll tell you,” I promise him. I don’t try to let myself think too far ahead about the implications of that, about what James would want, because if I let myself start thinking that James is unquestionably alive, that I can see his face again, hear his voice and laugh, get to touch him, then I’ll never stop no matter what proof is put in front of my face.

“Where will you start?” Alexander asks, and I shrug.

“Waiting for a favor to come through from Colborne on my probation length,” I tell him, “and I’ll have to get a passport, which isn’t exactly easy for an ex-con. Until then, I’ll do some research. Go to Del Norte. I don’t expect to see him there, just – maybe there’s something.”

Alexander pats my shoulder again. “Well. You know where to find me if you need me. And wherever you end up, send Pip a postcard. She’s already texted me four times about making sure you got here safely.”

I laugh, and we move on to easier topics, to Colin and experimental theatre. I’ll stay the rest of the week. See Colin’s show. It’s the least I can do.

* * *

 

The paperwork goes through, but it takes too long. I’m restless, uncertain, motivated, despairing. I go to Del Norte, breathe in the beach air.

I learn that James’s father is dead, died eight months before James drove his car up the beach and left it there forever.

It could mean nothing. But it also could mean that James had the money to disappear. It would explain why he’d never done it before then.

 Alexander’s right. If anyone could do this, it would be James. Dissipating into the air, like he was never real in the first place. I used to doubt that he was real. Sitting in my cell, even back at Dellecher, it was hard to believe that someone like James, bright and fluorescent and next to _me_ , was real.

A tragic hero. No tragic hero had ever changed the ending. But James could be the first.

There are places James and I talked about. Not a day has faded from my memory – the past ten years blur together, but those four years are crystalline in my mind. We talked about London and the Globe of course. That would be an obvious choice, but James has always been cleverer than that.

Maybe Italy. Rome – a reference to Julius Caesar, where it all went sideways. Or perhaps King Lear – Dover, the only place we’d ever kissed. Scotland for Macbeth. That was a strong contender, he’d drowned the first time the only night he’d ever been Macbeth. Greece, where theatre itself began.

Where did Pericles find Thasia?

That’s where I end up going, and not just because Turkey is slightly more lax when it comes to customs. James’s metaphors follow through. I’ve always understood James, like second nature, like half of me. If Pericles is the source material, Pericles is who he’ll be. So I go to Turkey. Antakya, Tarsus, Selçuk.

It’s Selçuk where I hold the most hope.

I tell customs I’ll be leaving in four weeks. And maybe I will be. But I hope I won’t be. I want to disappear, too.

Selçuk isn’t my first stop, but it’s my first stop that means something. I feel more lost here in Turkey than ever, like the cities around me could swallow me whole. Or rather, that they could swallow James whole. How am I supposed to find one man in the mess of the world?

But two weeks in Selçuk and I’ve yet to see anything. I can’t be everywhere at once, I ask around, I have James’s picture, a polaroid that I’d taken from Alexander’s of him after Midsummer’s, third year, bright and beaming.

 _I’m sick of playing fools in love,_ James had said, and now here I am, playing that fool, will be playing that fool for the rest of my days, begging for scraps, for anyone to tell me they know him, to see a flash of his hair or tangible proof that he’s somewhere in the world.

I can’t expect to find him right away – the world is vast and monstrous and James is small and could just be at the bottom of the ocean. I’ll go to Scotland next. I’ll go from Pericles to Macbeth, then follow Edgar to Dover. They’re my three best guesses.

I don’t want to go back to America. I want to keep searching, keep moving, chase him forever. If I could just catch him –

 _Time is the wisest counsellor of all,_ I remind myself, still stuck on Pericles. It should mean something. it has to mean something.

I get a cup of black coffee outside the ruins, wondering what my plan is. Keep doing this legally? Or take on some new identity, really become a criminal who can never go back home?

If I knew James was out there, the decision wouldn’t be a decision at all. As it stands, I just feel sick with inaction, inability, failure.

“Weren’t you in here the other day?” The waitress asks me, taking the coins from my outstretched hands. “Asking about someone?”

“Yeah,” I said, digging James’s picture out of my wallet out of habit. This wasn’t my only method of searching – I went to places I thought might hold significance, but of course James wouldn’t just sit there all day, every day, waiting for me on the off-chance I appeared.

He could have a life, wherever he was. He could’ve disappeared to finally be free – of Dellecher, of guilt, of me. O

I know, down to my core, that that isn’t it. James’s guilt will follow him. Just like I will.

“Hey, I think I know him,” the waitress says as she squints at James’s picture and I don’t hear her at first I’m so surprised. “That’s Alex, right?”

“I – what?” I ask, gaping at her. She nods, hesitant, not quite sure, and I almost fall to my knees on the spot. “Alex?”

Alex. Alex like Alexander.

“Yeah, he’s a stagehand with that traveling Shakespeare company that comes through on the weekends when tourism’s heavy,” the girl explains. “They perform out in the ruins? You’ve had to see flyers, they’re here all the time.”

“I have,” I say, more than a little faintly. I’d checked libraries, the ruins, any place where James could be or could have someone who recognized him there, and the last place I’d planned on checking was this show on Friday night, and had all but run out of hope because the town really wasn’t as big as the others I’d visited. I thought I’d exhausted all of my resources. “You said he’s a stagehand? How do you know him?”

“My sister is an actress with them, I usually go see them when they’re here,” she replies with a shrug. “He’s come out for drinks a few times before with the company. American. Quiet guy. Studious. Always has a book? Usually some tattered copy of something or other Shakespearean? He looks a lot younger in that picture you have. What, did he run away with the theatre or something like that?”

“Something like that,” I say, half under my breath, mainly because I don’t trust myself to speak right now without getting choked up.

It feels like a dream. It feels like a nightmare. It doesn’t feel like _Pericles_ yet, it only feels like _King Lear._ It feels like I’m slogging through molasses trying to get to Friday, it feels like I’m about to get my feet pulled out from under me once more.

I’m still thinking like a tragedy, but they’re performing _The Tempest._

It’s outside, in the low light of the ruins, and I can’t even watch the show. The girl said stagehand, but all I can see James as Ferdinand, thought drowned at sea, revealed to be playing chess at the end of the play. James would be playing chess. I could find James playing chess.

I wonder why he doesn’t act. Maybe it hurts too much.

Maybe he’s not really here. Maybe I imagined the girl in the coffee shop. I’ll see what looks like the back of James’s head, run to him, turn him around, only to find it’s someone who has the curve of his shoulders, the shine of his hair, and my search will continue.

Maybe I imagined James in the first place. Maybe I imagined Dellecher. Maybe I imagined it all.

I haven’t seen a show since I was in one – since King Lear. It hurts in a way I didn’t think it would, seeing Shakespeare play out around me. I should have learned to hate him by now, but I hadn’t.

There’s an intermission. Intermissions terrify me. I remember my last one with perfect clarity. My last moments of freedom. My last real moments with James.

It will all be worth it if he’s here tonight. If he’s here tonight, I wouldn’t take back a single second.

I push past the fake backstage barricades to get to where the cast is milling about behind the makeshift stage. I get a few odd looks. I hold out James’s picture in their general direction.

“Alex,” I say, demand, more than impatient. Someone seems to sense my growing alarm, and she quickly says “Yeah, Alex is here. Probably having a smoke, over there…”

She gestures out into the ruins and I push past the cast and crew without really seeing them, blind to anything but the feeling of something crawling through my whole body, dread, anticipation, excitement, I don’t know yet, I’ll know when I see him, _if_ I see him, I have to keep reminding myself that this could be nothing, this could be nothing, this could –

I see the back of his head. Could be any other guy, the twilight sun gleaming off the back of his head, the arch of his back and part of his shoulders, but he turns, I can see the silhouette of his face, and it’s the same, it’s the same, it’s just the same.

“James,” I manage to croak out, and he turns all the way to face me.

We stare. He’s older, but doesn’t look quite as sick as he did when I saw him for the last time four years ago. He’s got a pale imitation of stubble on his face, there’s a sharpness I don’t recognize, but it’s James. It’s James. It’s James Farrow in front of me, alive and not drowned.

He breathes – smiles – breathes again, stuttering, not quite so deep. His cigarette falls from his hands as if he can’t keep the grasp on it anymore.

“Oliver,” he says, and though his voice is rough, it’s full of wonderment, like he can’t quite believe I’m here.

It’s proof. It’s the proof I’m looking for. I can stop holding back, stop forcing myself to remain impartial, remain cynical.

I rush toward him, I don’t care about anything else. He meets me halfway.

“God,” I choke into his shoulder, pressing my forehead to it, unable to stop from sobbing. “Oh God, you’re alive.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” James is saying into my neck and I can barely believe it’s him still. “I’m so sorry, Oliver.”

“For what?” I say, disentangling myself if only so I can look in his eyes. Still grey. Still flecked with gold. Filled with tears. “James, you’re alive, there’s nothing to be sorry for.”

“Is that really all you need from me?” James asks, laughing almost helplessly, tears freely falling.

“Yes,” I tell him unequivocally. “I thought you were dead, you bastard. I wish I could be angry at you for letting me think that but I’ll never be because you’re _alive_.”

“I thought you’d understand the message,” James says, grasping at my elbow, holding tightly, eyes wide and afraid. “You did, didn’t you? I mean, you’re here, you must have.”

“I understood,” I told him. “I only got the message once I was let out – no one even told me, James. I got out and thought you were still there, still home. Didn’t get your letter until weeks later, and it wasn’t exactly crystal clear. Do you have any idea –”

“Christ,” James says, eyes wide and alarmed. “I didn’t mean – I had to go, Oliver, I had to, or else I really would have killed myself. I would’ve stayed if I could. But it was either dying or disappearing. I couldn’t live with myself there.”

“Can you here?” I ask, looking at the ruins sprawling out around us.

“No,” James says with a little laugh, less bitter than I thought it would be. “I’ll never be able to live with myself. Richard’s always a step behind me no matter how far I run. But I couldn’t keep on being there, being me. I wanted so badly to die but I know I’m going to hell. It scared me too much. And seeing you – God, seeing you hurt more than anything. This was the best way for me to survive – I thought it was best for you, too, to be without me. So when you got out, you could have a life. But I couldn’t not leave you something, if you ever wanted to find me.”

“What?” I say, half of it not making any sense to me. “James. It will never be best for me to be without you. You’re – you’re _everything_ to me. You’re the only thing that got me through those ten years.”

Without thinking, I take his hand in mine. “ _I do love thee. And when I love thee not, chaos is come again.”_

James looks as if he’s about to burst, the tears streaming down his cheeks, glistening. “God, Oliver, I love you. I never thought you’d –”

“I’m _in_ love with you,” I have to clarify, I have to make sure he understands, I have to finally say these words, my only truth, my constant, the words that haunt me as much as James himself. “I’ve been in love with you for almost fifteen years.”

“I don’t understand you, I never have,” James says, but he’s smiling through his tears. “After all I’ve put you through. I’m the villain in your story. In everyone’s story. I –”

“No,” I cut him off. “This isn’t a tragedy. This is a romance. This is Pericles. _Journeys end in lovers meeting._ ”

“That’s Twelfth Night,” James tells me as if I didn’t already know, his lip twitching. “And is that what we are?”

“In every sense but the literal,” I say, our fingers slowly intertwining within each other as if by will of their own. “Fuck tragic heroes, James. We’re all a tragic hero if we think hard enough about it. We’re all a tragic villain, too. So let’s stop fucking thinking about it.”

James’s eyes go soft around the edges, but he’s cut off before he can by a voice from where the play is still going on in the background, forgotten by the two of us but not the world.

“Alex, come help with the background! Oh, who’s your friend?”

Someone stops short when they’re in front of James and I, a short, wiry man who looks at James a little confusedly, probably because we’re both still crying.

“Hey, I’ve got unexpected company tonight, Adam,” James says to the guy, turning to me with the quietest smile. “This is Oliver. We went to school together. Haven’t seen each other in years. Are you guys gonna be good if I go grab a drink or something with him?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the guy blinks at me unassumingly, though there’s a certain amount of suspicion there. I’m somewhat aware that James and I are still holding hands. “You probably won’t get paid for the night then.”

“That’s fine,” James says. “C’mon, Oliver, let’s…”

He pulls me away from the stage, out into the dusky evening, and our hands are still intertwined as we walk. I used to have dreams about this.

“Alex?” I ask and James has the decency to blush.

“Well, I wasn’t going to use the name Oliver,” he says, half under his breath, and our shoulders knock together.

“Why are you a stagehand?” I ask him.

“How’d you know I was a stagehand?” He challenges, eyes flickering in my direction.

“I’ve been showing your picture to people,” I say. “Someone recognized you. Your letter let me know you were alive, but not much else.”

He grimaces, holds my hand even more tightly within his grip. “I’m sorry. I should have just left you an actual goddamn letter but – I was afraid someone else would open it. Or that you just didn’t care. If I was obscure, I could pretend you just hadn’t figured it out yet. I’m sorry – that was selfish. I’ve been working on how to be – less so. But I’m not yet.”

“You’re lucky I know you so well,” I say, almost overcome with affection. “Turkey’s the first place I’ve looked, other than California. But I knew you wouldn’t be there. I just wanted to see.”

“Who knows you’re here?” He asks, and I shake my head.

“My question first,” I say. “Why are you a stagehand?”

James gets a wistful look in his eye, slows his walk. “I don’t think I can ever act again. Every character I’ve ever been – they’re all still inside me. I’ve got all their tragic flaws. I can’t afford anymore.”

“You could just do comedies,” I suggest, mostly joking, and James moves to walk even closer to me.

“Not without you,” James says, quiet as can be. “That’s my philosophy. Not without you. The idea of you in prison, not living your life – how the hell could I live mine? In California, it was too much to bear. Not living. I knew I needed to not-live somewhere else or just…. _not live_.”

He clears his throat, loud and purposeful. “So. Who knows you’re here?”

“Detective Colborne,” I say and James makes a surprised noise. “Needed him to pull a few strings for me to get me abroad without hassle. And Alexander knows I’m looking for you. I need to tell him you’re alive, by the way. It’s up to you if you want anyone else to know, but I promised I’d tell Alexander. He’ll be flattered to know you’re using his name.”

“Just his first name, he can’t go getting too cocky,” James says, not without affection. “Tell him but – I don’t think I could bear anyone knowing. Knowing I lied to them. Again. I didn’t want to. I just didn’t want to die. And I didn’t want the only people in the world to matter me think of me as a murderer. A murderer who got away with the crime. It was better to be dead.”

“It’s okay,” I say, leaning into him. “And you didn’t get away with it, James. None of us did. We were all accomplices. We all paid for it. We’re all – we’re all stuck back in time, frozen there, forever. We’re never escaping that.”

“I’d do anything to go back,” James says, but I shake my head. It’s not that I don’t have regrets, but that I know better than to think that hindsight would’ve helped.

“I wouldn’t,” I say. “If we went back, we might miss this moment right now.”

“This is a better moment?” James asks, hinging on a little desperate. We’re coming to the edge of the ruins now, the sunset to our backs. It illuminates his silhouette. He’s somehow more beautiful in person than in any of my fleeting dreams about him. They wouldn’t last. This James would.

“I don’t know if it’s better,” I say, swallowing fear and pride and everything else. “But it’s what we have. And it’s more than I ever imagined. I wanted you to be there – when I got out of prison, I wanted you to be waiting for me. Hearing you were dead was worse – worse than any moment in those ten years combined. But you’re here. You’re real. You’re standing in front of me. It’s – _you’re –_ all I’ve ever dreamed of.”

He looks up at me, almost boyish, like we’re twenty-one, like we could close our eyes and just go _back_.

We collide then, years’ worth of pent up emotion spilling out of us both and onto one another. James bites at my lip, I tangle my hands in his hair. It’s more than I can handle, and yet I keep moving, move my way down his jaw, bury my face in his neck, let out a litany of praises, moans, everything. Ten years melt away. We could be at Dellecher. We could be in the Castle. We could be young and innocent and not yet a tragedy.

Maybe we aren’t a tragedy anymore.

We pull apart shakily. James smiles, brighter than I’ve ever seen, brighter even then when he was eighteen and didn’t know what his life was going to become. It’s worth everything.

“I don’t live far from here,” James says, laugh breathless, leaning into me. “How – how long can you stay?”

“James,” I gaze at him, wondering how he can still ask the question after all this time. He should know by now. Maybe it’s my fault for not telling him. Maybe it’s his fault for letting guilt overtake any other emotion he’s capable of feeling. “Always. Forever.”

James buries his face in my shoulder, making me stumble on the sidewalk. I can’t see his expression but I can tell he’s crying, but I’m crying too.

“ _I do love nothing in the world so well as you_ ,” I tell him, letting my cheek rest on his hair, and he huffs a laugh as he turns to face me, grey eyes bright and soft all at once on mine.

“ _Is that not strange?”_ He responds, and I shake my head.

“It’s not strange,” I say. “It’s everything.”

He kisses me again. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.


End file.
